This photo courtesy of Michael Rauwolf Photography shows the home Will Moffitt built on Wildwood Lane 40 years ago overlooking Lake Erie on Fidalgo Island. Allan Island is seen in the distance.
Michael Rauwolf Photography
With its distinct white turret overlooking Lake Erie and the valley several hundred feet below, Will Moffitt’s home resembles a castle fit for a king.
“Everybody thinks I’m a millionaire because of my house,” Moffitt said while sitting in his living room on a recent Friday morning.
“I’m just a simple carpenter,” he said.
Moffitt, 79, built his unique, three-story house on the hill 40 years ago with help from his late wife, Sandy, and his two sons.
This photo courtesy of Michael Rauwolf Photography shows the home Will Moffitt built on Wildwood Lane 40 years ago overlooking Lake Erie on Fidalgo Island.
Michael Rauwolf Photography
A year ago, he put the three-bed, two-bath home he calls his “Bavarian hunting lodge” on the market for $1.8 million. Last month, he dropped the price to $1.69 million.
“This was my retirement plan,” said Moffitt, who has been retired for about 25 years. “It just got drug out because we were having too much fun to work on it like we should have.”
Moffitt said life is good high up in his custom-built, “Wildwood Mountain” castle — complete with panoramic southerly views, a man-made waterfall and no mortgage to speak of — but he’s ready to cut loose and spend the rest of his years flying, sailing, cruising, camping and fishing.
Not only is Moffitt nearly finished with his colon cancer treatments, but he said that the 1,800-square-foot home he built will soon be more house than he can manage.
“If it sold tomorrow, I would walk out and not look back,” he said.
Will Moffitt sits for a photo Friday, June 12, in the living room of the house he built 40 years ago on a steep hillside overlooking Lake Erie.
Nicholas Johnson / Anacortes American
Moffitt grew up in Sedro-Woolley before moving to Michigan as a teen, where he finished high school and worked in an auto manufacturing plant for a few years.
While there, he met Sandy and bought his first car: a new 1965 Ford Mustang.
“I put $500 down on a $2,700 car,” he said. “I learned a lesson on how hard it was to pay off a car, even with a good job. My goal ever since has been to stay out of debt.”
About five years later, a 22-year-old Moffitt was checking groceries in Anacortes, and his young kids were starting school. That’s when he began teaching himself carpentry, he said.
“Carpentry was an escape from the grocery store,” he said. “I taught myself through Fine Homebuilding magazines, Fine Woodworking magazines, WoodenBoat magazines.”
In the ‘70s, Moffitt worked on the original Brodniak Hall at Anacortes High School, among other things, and later found work at the nearby Texaco oil refinery, he said.
He also spent a lot of his time out in the wilderness with his kids as a Scout master.
Eventually, he and Sandy bought property and built a home on Heart Lake Road in Anacortes, Moffitt said, but that came with debt. So, in 1985, the couple sold their home and went looking for a place to build anew with about $35,000 in proceeds.
“We thought we knew every piece of property in town that was for sale,” Moffitt said.
But nothing they found fit the family’s budget, nor Moffitt’s desire to avoid taking on debt.
Then, he and Sandy drove down Wildwood Lane, where the couple spotted a “for sale” sign covered in moss in front of a steep, undeveloped hillside. The owner wanted $25,000 for the 1.5-acre, heavily wooded property, Moffitt said. They offered $13,000 and got it, he said.
The first thing the Moffitts did with their new lot was clear a steep trail to a bluff about 250 feet up. For the next 30 years, that trail would be the family’s only way to get from the road to the house and back.
“It kept us in shape,” Moffitt said.
This photo courtesy of Michael Rauwolf Photography shows the home Will Moffitt built on Wildwood Lane 40 years ago overlooking Lake Erie on Fidalgo Island. Mount Erie is seen in the distance.
Michael Rauwolf Photography
The family rented a house in town, and Moffitt took time off work to focus on building their home. Then he set about clearing dirt and foliage from the site with the help of his 15-year-old son, Wayne.
“I carried up three sheets of plywood and made a little three-sided shelter,” Moffitt said. “At lunchtime, we cooked venison on a stick, you know. We had a good time. It was a good experience.”
He strung a cable from a tree at the bottom of the hill to a tree at the top, where he built a winch with a haul line in order to get equipment and materials up to what would be their home site.
“Everything came up that cable,” he said. “Sand, gravel, cement, lumber, roofing. The sheet rock came up the cable, the refrigerator came up the cable, the doublewide Jacuzzi came up the cable. Everything.”
Moffitt then began surveying the site and drawing up plans, including designs for a septic system. Then they poured the foundation atop solid rock, using hand-mixed concrete with rebar inserted every 8 inches, he said.
Moffitt also extended utilities to the site, including 300 feet of electric power line, 450 feet of sewer line with a drain field at the bottom, and pipes and a pump to bring water up from a community well.
“People say it’s hard to do,” Moffitt said, recalling that it was snowing on Thanksgiving that year as he hung the power line. “It’s not hard. It just takes work.”
After nine months, the Moffitts were out of money, so the family moved into the unfinished shell of their new home, framed with plywood and 50 sheets of 5/8-inch sheet rock, he said.
“I couldn’t do that now,” Moffitt said of moving in early. “The county was pretty lax in ’85. They didn’t care if I moved in.”
Moffitt got a job at Skagit Architectural Millwork and continued building the house on the weekends, eventually adding another 200 sheets of sheet rock, covering the house in reinforced concrete instead of traditional stucco and then covering that with two coats of the highest-quality white paint he could find.
“This is extremely durable,” Moffitt said of his home’s exterior. “There’s not a crack in the house.”
This photo courtesy of Michael Rauwolf Photography shows the living room inside the home Will Moffitt built on Wildwood Lane 40 years ago overlooking Lake Erie on Fidalgo Island.
Michael Rauwolf Photography
The first paycheck Moffitt got from his new job paid for a refrigerator, he said. The second paid for a cook stove.
“We were out of debt and loving it,” he said.
Moffitt got more than money from his new job in commercial cabinetry, which had him working on projects for big clients such as hospitals, banks, airports and government agencies.
Oftentimes, he said, the company would end up with leftover materials destined for the dump, so he’d bring them home and find a way to use them on his house. For example, the floor of his living room features red oak leftover from a job at the University of Washington.
This photo courtesy of Michael Rauwolf Photography shows custom wood flooring inside the home Will Moffitt built on Wildwood Lane 40 years ago overlooking Lake Erie on Fidalgo Island.
Michael Rauwolf Photography
“It would have went in the dumpster,” Moffitt said. “Instead, it’s my floor.”
Later, Moffitt got a folding accordion door that his church, Anacortes Christian Church, was getting rid of, he said. He turned it into wainscoting for one of the walls in his house.
“I’m kind of an opportunist,” he said, noting that many features of the house were dreamt up in the moment based on whatever materials he could get his hands on.
“I had no idea what I wanted until I did it,” he said. “The house kind of evolved, you know. I’d be working on something, and I’d have an idea, and I would just do it.”
The home features about 25 types of hardwood, from African rosewood and Honduran mahogany to vertical grain walnut, bamboo and zebrawood.
Several walls are made with salvaged door cutouts leftover from a door-building business Moffitt had before buying and developing the property.
This photo courtesy of Michael Rauwolf Photography shows the master bathroom’s two-person Jacuzzi tub inside the home Will Moffitt built on Wildwood Lane 40 years ago overlooking Lake Erie on Fidalgo Island.
Michael Rauwolf Photography
The home features nine floor levels, the highest of which is in the master bedroom’s attached bathroom at the top of the turret, where a large Jacuzzi tub enjoys what Moffitt calls “the best view in town.”
The bedroom and bathroom boast views of Mount Erie and Lake Erie on one side and Burrows Bay and Lopez Island on the other.
Directly below that circular bathroom sits the circular dining room, with a hand-made dining table standing atop a custom wood floor featuring a compass rose.
Above the table hangs a chandelier made with six elk antlers that can be raised and lowered with a pulley system for cleaning and changing out light bulbs.
Outside, the turret is capped with a conical, copper-colored roof that Moffitt made himself with sheet metal.
This photo courtesy of Michael Rauwolf Photography shows the dining room inside the home Will Moffitt built on Wildwood Lane 40 years ago overlooking Lake Erie on Fidalgo Island.
Michael Rauwolf Photography
An upstairs office features floor-to-ceiling shelves made of more mahogany door cutouts, and the kitchen’s cabinets are made with book-matched red oak from a single tree.
The master bedroom features his and hers walk-in closets with built-in dresser drawers. And, throughout the house, Moffitt created hidden compartments to store some of his most prized possessions.
Moffitt said he built everything in the house himself, from the door frames and the light fixtures to the stairs and the railings, all of which feature artistic touches such as hearts, butterflies, fish and dragonflies created with contrasting woods.
“I tell people I did everything, and they come in and say, ‘Well, did you do the floor?’” Moffitt said. “I tell them, ‘Yeah, don’t ask again. I did everything.’”
However, the house didn’t come together overnight, as the Moffitts also made time to go sailing on their boat, fly around in their Cessna biplane and go to work each day, always using the trail to get to and from the house.
This photo courtesy of Michael Rauwolf Photography shows the dining room and staircase from the kitchen inside the home Will Moffitt built on Wildwood Lane 40 years ago overlooking Lake Erie on Fidalgo Island.
Michael Rauwolf Photography
Around 2000, the couple’s two grandchildren came to live with them, and they also used the trail to get to school and back each day.
Around the same time, Moffitt transitioned the house away from a wood-burning stove for heat to a propane furnace fed by a 450-foot gas line.
However, he said, the home’s south-facing windows, especially those on the first floor, generate plenty of heat on sunny days, even in the cold winter months.
“I was fortunate that this property faces south,” Moffitt said, “so I orientated the house to get the sun.”
In 2010, Sandy was able to buy an old backhoe with an inheritance she’d received. That allowed Moffitt to begin creating a road up to the house, which took the better part of a decade, he said.
He also had to pay for an easement to use part of his neighbor’s property for the road.
“That cost me dearly,” he said, “but I couldn’t have built the road without it.”
Moffitt said he’d wanted to build a spiral-shaped ramp out of pressure-treated lumber, like those found in parking garages, but “the county would have just went ballistic on that.”
Pat and Will Moffitt sit on a brick terrace outside their home Friday, June 12, above Wildwood Lane near Lake Erie.
Nicholas Johnson / Anacortes American
Instead, he created a roughly 1,000-foot road that has a 30-35% grade and two sharp switchbacks. It typically requires a vehicle with four-wheel drive, though Moffitt said a two-wheel-drive car can make it up and back down in dry conditions.
Outside the house, brick terraces with sweeping views feature goldfish-filled ponds and a man-made waterfall.
One day, Moffitt said, he looked out his kitchen window to see an otter swimming in the pond, eating his fish.
“I got my pistol,” he said. “He got five of them (fish), but I got him in the back of the head, skinned him and tanned his hide.”
This photo courtesy of Michael Rauwolf Photography shows a detached “caretaker’s cabin” that sits next to the home Will Moffitt built on Wildwood Lane 40 years ago overlooking Lake Erie on Fidalgo Island.
Michael Rauwolf Photography
On the other side of the house, a detached “caretaker’s cabin” is perched among the madronas and Douglas firs, accessible by a narrow wood-plank pathway.
It’s got the essentials, including a bathroom and a kitchen with hot water, plus bamboo floors and cabinets, and a six-foot Jacuzzi of its own. It’s long been home to Moffitt’s younger son, Wayne, who has difficulty getting around due to complications from diabetes.
In the past couple of years, getting groceries and other items up some 47 brick stairs from the driveway has been made a bit easier with a motor-powered tram capable of hauling about 500 pounds, Moffitt said.
Before that, the family either carried the groceries themselves or used the cable and winch that brought everything else up to the house from the road below.
This photo courtesy of Michael Rauwolf Photography shows hearts on wooden railing inside the home Will Moffitt built on Wildwood Lane 40 years ago overlooking Lake Erie on Fidalgo Island.
Michael Rauwolf Photography
After Sandy died of pancreatic cancer in 2021, Moffitt was “destroyed,” he said, so he threw himself into projects around the house, such as adding more of the hearts that his late wife enjoyed.
Today, he said, there are 250 hearts around the home, from the floors to the rafter tails.
“I’m kind of a romantic,” he said.
Above the home’s main doorway are the German words, “Zu lieben und zu schützen,” which means “To love and to protect.”
Pat and Will Moffitt pose for a photo at the main entry to their home Friday, June 12, above Wildwood Lane near Lake Erie.
Nicholas Johnson / Anacortes American
By the next year, Moffitt had decided he didn’t want to live the rest of his life alone, so he got on eHarmony, where he eventually met Pat Parker.
“I decided I liked what I had and I wanted it again,” said Moffitt, who married Pat in October 2022.
At first, Pat said, she found the driveway up to the house to be “pretty treacherous and scary.” In the years since, they’ve laid down another 51 yards of hand-mixed concrete in an effort to make the climb a little less intimidating to prospective buyers.
When Pat first visited the house, she was amazed that one man had built it all himself, she said. She was similarly impressed that Sandy had been strong enough to put up with that trail all those years, she said.
“She worked in a bank, so she had to dress well, had to get to work on time, regardless of the weather,” Pat said. “I would never have done that.”
Since they’ve been married, Pat has pushed her husband to clean up loose ends and wrap up unfinished projects around the house, from removing stacks of extra wood sitting in nearly every room to finishing the main staircase’s curved oak handrail.
“She has been a fantastic support,” Moffitt said. “She’s encouraged me to work and get something done when I didn’t want to.”
There are still plenty of things Moffitt would like to do with the house, such as improve the landscaping, build a custom wooden clock into the living room wall and put another coat of finish on all the wood.
“It’s not done,” he said of his house. “I don’t have enough life to finish it, and I never would finish it.”
When the house sells, Moffitt said he and Pat plan to move to her place in Montesano. He plans to buy a seaplane so he can make regular fishing trips to Alaska, and he wants to get himself a Shelby Cobra to tool around in, too, he said.
Whether the castle sells sooner or later, he and Pat plan to spend plenty of time sailing throughout Puget Sound this summer, he said.
If he could do it all over again, Moffitt said he might not build a big castle on a hill. He would, however, build the highest quality home he possibly could using his own two hands.
“I wanted something different and unusual and quality,” he said. “That’s what I’ve got here. And being out of debt, not having a $2,000 house payment, that’s freedom.”
This photo courtesy of Michael Rauwolf Photography shows the home Will Moffitt built on Wildwood Lane 40 years ago overlooking Lake Erie on Fidalgo Island.
Michael Rauwolf Photography